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Death in a Brothel
Posted: 16 Nov 2005 09:57 AM |
Sooner slumped against a pile of bricks that used to be a structure, near an oil lamp that had not been extinguished by the rain. The lamplighters had done their job, even there on the waterfront. He was only a few paces away from the closed up mine, and he had only seen a few paces inside. The burning in his leg was intense and his skin was exquisitely sensitive. Though he had drawn out the poison quickly and looped a tourniquet around his leg just below the knee, much poison mingled with his blood. He needed urgently to rub out the pain stabbing at his calf, but couldn’t reach it. Gentle rain soaked his woolen robes and his hair. Water began to rush in the aqueduct at his side. The pile of bricks supported him and he began to slip into unconsciousness.
How long did he sit there in the soaking rain?
“Yes,” the bearded man called quietly, “hello to you. Are you…alright?”
Sooner roused and felt his vulnerability. He was lucky some urchin hadn’t taken his money and cut his throat. He huffed breaths in and out. “Hello to you as well,” he said rapidly. “Sick…snakebite.”
“I might be able to help,” said the bearded man, “…if you’ll allow me.” He spared only a glance as Sooner raised his robe to show tight and swollen hot-looking welts on his calf. Sooner thought the glance was a knowing one.
“You might be able,” Sooner said rolling rapidly through the words “to get me some place I could rest?” He seethed against a shooting, burning pain.
“Aye, place near by,” said the man. “Perhaps I should help you walk. Here, put your arm around my shoulder.”
Sooner could feel that the two were similar in build and weight, which meant that he likely burdened the other man. Sooner looked like he came out of the country, with a deeply tanned and weathered face, thick hair grown out on the top of his pate like a farmer, and a frame adequate to walk for miles or pull a heavy load. He wore a belted robe over a simple breeches and tunic, knee-high leather boots fixed with leather thongs, and was armed underneath with a dagger and short sword. The bearded man supported him with a little difficulty, and took up his satchel bag as well.
“Oy, Redbeard! We’ve got a hurt man here!”
It was only as they reached the commotion and noise of the portside tavern that Sooner realized where they had come. Glancing around he caught sight of Candy, and he hadn’t settled with her yet. Truth be told, this was the last place he wanted to see in his weakened condition.
He became suspicious of the bearded man, in that moment, after having crossed the streets and plazas of Port Royale through a fog of pain and weakness.
That they should arrive on this alley and enter this establishment, not the closest one by any means, set Sooner’s intuition buzzing like a locust. Inside Sooner was panting and avoided both Redbeard’s and the human serving woman’s gazes.
“Here friend, take a seat at this bench,” said the bearded man. “I’ll see if I can make arrangements for a room for you.”
Sooner squeezed his eyes shut against a creeping terror. Is this really happening? Have I fallen into the clutches of a villain, who preys upon the mass of men who move through this port every day? How complex a trap have I entered? He nodded tiredly, head hanging. You’ve got the room alright, he thought. You have a room all picked out for me, don’t you? But when the bearded man spoke at length with a dowdy serving woman of orcish blood, Sooner found his suspicions eased slightly.
Returning, the bearded man said, “Friend, I’m afraid the best I could do was secure a room in the brothel for you.”
Sooner rubbed his swollen leg and thought through scenarios as quickly as he could. This man, this stranger, he thought, he leads me to my death, and he will take his cut, paid no doubt for his treacherous agreement with prostitutes and killers. Horror blossomed. No help would come from Redbeard, nor the serving woman. Not after Sooner had betrayed her confidence and extorted her, on that very night.
And the brothel… Concealed beneath the table, his hand went into a soft pouch tied around his waist and found, among other bric-a-brac, a key polished by many hands. It was the key Candy had given him a night not long ago, when he had first visited her for comfort.
The bearded man explained, “Pork’s staying in the back room, and I don’t think you want to share a room with a half-orc.”
Sooner measured his words, now considering the stranger to be a mugger of the worst sort. I will have your name, he thought to himself. “I am grateful, friend,” he said. “What might I call you, if I can call you at all?”
“I am called Nico by my friends,” said the bearded man, “worse by those who aren’t.”
“I am called Sooner, Nico.” Put him at ease, he decided. “I am not from the Port.”
At length, Nico ended a friendly, probing conversation. “You look like you could use a good rest Sooner. Do you need some help up to the brothel?”
Sooner thought on it without responding.
“Its up to you,” Nico said. “…don’t want to make your injuries any worse by sitting up talking to some old baldy.”
Sooner’s will failed him and he nodded dumbly. Here I go, he thought. He stood, grunting. He wet his lips. “The brothel would be this way, eh?”
“I’ll walk with you, just to make sure you get up the stairs.”
I’m sure you will. You’ll make sure I go up those stairs, otherwise you forfeit your cut of the loot. You’ve layed it in for me, and now I’m done for. Half way across the common room, Sooner stopped, scrambling for words that would draw him out of this trap like he had drawn the poison from his wounds. “You aren’t a customer in this place, Nico?” he asked. “I mean, it only comes natural to our sex, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose,” Nico replied. “I prefer to find my horizontal enjoyment with women I don’t have to pay.” Nico winked and waited patiently until Sooner could continue walking. The two of them approached two doors. One door was ajar, and opened onto a common sleeping room with two bunks, and a lighted lantern. It was unoccupied. Adjacent was another door that lead to the upper floor of the tavern, reached by five or six worn and crooked wooden steps.
Nico began to help Sooner up those five or six stairs. Bone tired, Sooner produced the key polished by many hands. Sooner’s hand moved to the lock, and quickly worked the key and opened the door. Nico appeared satisfied.
Perhaps he doesn’t mean to sap me and take me for all I’m worth. Perhaps he doesn’t lead me to my death, Sooner thought. Perhaps it is my aid that he seeks. Perhaps he, Nico himself was once a victim of this place, and the two of us might overtake and extinguish the threat that rests within this place…
Sooner was the first one up the stairs. It all happened quicker than he expected, even in his weakened condition.
And then, the horror was gone.
Had Sooner witnessed the conversation that took place over his fallen form, he would not have doubted Nico's sincerity ever again. The fellow had run for help and returned with a group of adventurers passing through the Port on that evening. Help they did, to an extent, but Nico was left to transport Sooner to the Sisters' and pay for burial services on his own. This Nico did in good faith, and then departed from the Sisters to places unknown.
Nico. The name sprang to Sooner’s mind as he felt himself drawn by two gravediggers. Then he was outdoors. The men handled him roughly, and threw him face down across the back of a mule, arms and legs hanging like ropes. The mule started walking slowly down a hillside. Sooner was headed for a potters field, unwashed and unshrouded. But the movement of the animal massaged his body. Wounds that had dried sticky began to bleed anew. Then, breath entered his body.
He caught at the passing grasses with limp hands. Nico. The name gave him a purpose. He would track the man, and uncover the works that lead to his downfall. |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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Sooner Searches
Posted: 27 Nov 2005 02:35 PM |
The threshold of the Crossed Cutlasses. Sooner had walked along the darkened wharf to reach the tavern, sparing a cool glance towards Candy along the way. Haven’t settled up with you yet, he thought looking her way, but I will. After you have forgotten me, I will.
The threshold. The great wooden door hung loose on its leather hinges, with just a loop of oiled hemp rope for a temporary pull. The doorway, set awkwardly into an angle in the lichen-covered stone building with a massive ancient stone lintel, was cast in shadow like a nightmare. A warm human stink curled out of the tavern like the smell of days-old soup still in the pot. Straw had been tracked out the door on patron’s feet.
Sooner put his fist to his mouth as though to cough, and when he did the ring on his finger illuminated the scene. All of that night was fixed in his memory. This was the threshold that led to his hell.
He took a deep breath and again, threw the doorway back to enter. Once inside the portal slammed back on its frame behind him jarringly.
“You come in here regular?” That was how Sooner opened a conversation with a patron named Dorian, after the man’s drinking partner had left the Cutlasses. Gradually he stepped closer and closer to him. Sooner made a habit of standing a little too close when he talked to a person. He found that it helped to hold their attention, and brought a certain intensity to the words that he said.
Dorian responded that he didn’t live in town, “but when I do visit, this is the place I go to.” He was backed up against a table and bench in the common room of the Crossed Cutlasses, the table nearest to the door. He took a swig from a massive green wine bottle without taking his eyes off Sooner.
“Know a big man,” Sooner asked methodically, “named Nico?” He had been asking that question all over the Port.
The patron arched an eyebrow. “Big man? No. I know of a gnome that goes with that name…”
“I’ve heard tell of him. But the fellow I’m looking for is a man like you and me, big. With a beard, and a bald head. He’s a regular of Port. Or so I hear.”
Dorian shook his head. “I can find him for you,” he offered unexpectedly. “But it’ll cost.”
Sooner was caught off-guard. “For hire then? Well that’s something. What do you want?”
A pregnant moment.
Dorian pondered a moment. “I can’t promise anything sir, but say… ehh… five hundred gold? And then I’ll do my best to find him for you.”
“Gold,” Sooner asked? “That is what you want?”
The man shrugged. “I’m a sellsword. What else would I possibly want?”
Sooner took him at his word. “I will pay you now then, and more when he gets a message.”
“What’s the message,” Dorian asked?
Rain hammered on the crooked door to the Crossed Cutlasses, hanging on its cracked leather hinges. It slammed behind Sooner when he exited. He walked back along the side of the black waters, dappled and undulating, and stepped across the open aqueduct that rushed out foamy into the harbor.
His woolen robes were soaked when he reached the Black Pearl, and he shook them out angrily. His boots were slippery. He hated the city. But there was something else here that he needed.
A shopkeeper who deals in the gutter. A recent memory. ”Ya aren’ goon to find this fellar. Ya smells leck a farmer, an’ you look leck one, too. Fella, y’best joost be huppy fer ya live.” When Sooner pressed him, he responded with more discouragement. ”Son, ya doon’t even speck the language. Ya don’ belong inna pless like this. A’fores you fin’ this fellar, some’un else is goona find you. ‘Specially if you go droppin’ the name ah Nico around these parts. You ain’ got time ta learn, son…
The shopkeeper had been right. Sooner knew it, on many levels. So what he did is return to the common room of the Black Pearl, and sit.
Sooner does not take alcohol into his body. He did take some sour-smelling fish soup with only a little fish in the broth and enough rubbery sea greens to suggest the sea floor. He sat, and took his soup with a shallow spoon made from cow horn, and he watched. All around him was conversation and movement. Blank-eyed, he listened, discerning the tempo of the room and the patterns, the poetry of a rotted-out fixture of the Port Royale underworld. Gradually he realized that there were things never said but communicated nonetheless.
Warmed by the soup and sleepy from a watery beer that was the cheapest and least toxic beverage to be had, Sooner took a bunk in the back room of the Pearl. It was very late, and he had to share the narrow straw bed with a drunken dwarf who slept with his eyes open and generated a tremendous amount of heat and gas.
The next day Sooner did the same thing. He brought his satchel and his things into the common room and sat, sipping broth or chewing bread softened in the watery beer, and watching. He became capable of fading out conversation that he heard around him and just watching the movements of people’s hands and bodies. Subtle movements were shielded, but once he noticed them nearby he could pick them out on the other side of the room. These movements communicated petty schemes in the making, and the schemers were confident that only those in the family could read them.
On another day Sooner found he recognized twenty different signals and understood how they went together. He did not know their meaning, but puzzling over it was a pleasure that kept him occupied through the dangerous night in the back room boarding always available at the Pearl.
Tonight, soaked by rain and feet sliding in his damp leather boots, Sooner returned to the gutter merchant, walking down the narrow corridor that led to his shop. The corridor was lined with people who had flowed out from the common room crowded with alley-dwellers seeking refuge from the rain. Sooner caught a few disconnected signals that weren’t directed at him. But, some were about him:
Seen him before?
You better pay the Younger. I hear he likes eyes.
Strong lock then. Know anyone who can crack it?
Come up out of the sewers, three of them. Carrying something heavy, too…
She is an elf’s bastard daughter.
He’s got a weapon under his robe.
The gutter merchant greeted him with disinterest, shaking his head slightly. “Makin’ good on this fellar, then? Ya fine wha’ ya got coming, son? Cause yar goona fine it soon ‘nuff, keep hangin’ roond the Paarl.”
“I’m bringin’ you my custom,” Sooner answered. “Then I’ll go.”
“What ya brung, then,” the merchant asked?
Sooner drew out a number of items. Among them was a short sword bearing a minimal enchantment, and a dagger of like sharpness. “I want to trade, for that,” he said.
The gutter merchant drew down a longsword that was displayed unsheathed. “Trade a li’l steel far a lotta steel, eh?” He presented the blade pommel-first to Sooner.
He took it up and looked down the length of the blade. It was stock-straight and would take a good edge.
The merchant gestured to the counter. “These, an a thousand coin far that sword, son.”
This cut Sooner’s purse down to nothing. He stepped close to the counter, putting himself near to the merchant’s face. “Will I do better at the Guyver’s?”
The merchant touched a finger to a hard black eyepatch made of leather. “But then, ya would-na haff tha benefit o’ me, watchin’ outta this place fer this Nico fellar that yar lookin’ fer.” The merchant nodded and smiled toothily.
Sooner stacked the coins on the counter. He felt the sword one more time, and slid it down into his robes unsheathed. That would be his instrument.
“Put a sharpenin’ on that blade fer ya son,” asked the gutter merchant?
Sooner’s gesture signaled a curt refusal before he left. |
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
-Burt Reynolds, "The End" |
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